Exodus

Rushing back from Alsace, I learned that the École Estienne was evacuating its teachers and students to Anjou. My mother enrolled me as a way to get me out of Paris, and I left with them. In Angers, the teachers took us to see the splendid Tapestries of the Apocalypse before they were put into safe storage. We were housed in the Château de Challain-la-Poterie, surrounded by a magnificent park, and I was assigned to make bed frames out of boards and chicken wire for the hundreds of young refugee children living there. The elderly châtelaine appeared completely stricken by all the bustling about. We also had to find enough milk and bread to feed everyone, which allowed me to discover other forms of peasant life and interesting traditions, such as barter.